Hidden Persuasion or Junk Science? Amid the many vagaries of marketing research, one thing is clear: Consumers lie. About what they want. About what they need. Sometimes they do it purposely. Most often they simply don't seem to realize what they're doing at all. Mr. Pradeep and his peers in the field of neuromarketing say they have the solution.

Machiavellian Tactics: Hidden Persuasion in Business and Politics Today Many regard Niccolo Machiavelli as the founding father of political thought control. He was the strategic adviser to the Florentine Republic in the early sixteenth century, and was one of the first to compile a written guide for rulers on the acquisition and deployment of political power. His book The Prince circulated privately during his lifetime, and was only published after his death because it was thought that its advice on the use of cunning, deceit and guile was far too dangerous to fall into dissident hands. ‘It would be best to be both loved and feared’, is one of the instructions he offers would-be rulers. ‘But since the two rarely come together, anyone compelled to choose will find greater security in being feared than in being loved.’ The book was banned by the Catholic Church, who added it to its Index Liborum Prohibitorum, while no doubt keeping several copies in the Vatican library for the guidance of senior members of the all-powerful Roman Curia. It became one of the bibles of the Founding fathers of the American colonies, John Adams finding its advice invaluable, particularly the practical guidance it gives on the centralization of power and the control of rebel factions.

Persuasion Strategies These strategies are aimed at convincing those in high power to change so that power is shared more equitably and oppressive practices are reduced or eliminated. There are three main types:1. appeals to moral values (the super-ego);2. appeals to self-interest (the ego); and3. appeals to self-realization (the id).

Hidden Persuasion - Using Subliminal Messages in LanguagePlacing subliminal messages into language was first attempted with hypnosis and the best way to explain how to do it is to take a hypnotic example. A hypnotist might say something like, "you may find that you want to relax or just rest and maybe even close your eyes or just keep them open if you want to".

To the uninitiated this sentence is straight forward with no hidden meaning or subliminal messages. However, when the hypnotist uses hypnotic language to say exactly the same thing he changes this sentence into one with 2 hidden subliminal messages embedded in it!

It all begins with the tone of voice the hypnotist uses. Upon hearing this you may believe you are being offered a choice i.e. that the subject can relax and close his eyes only if he wants to. However, he has only given the subject two choices - he can either relax or rest. No other choice is given!

Ahead of the June 17 elections in Greece, Athens was the scene of a gruesome nostalgia trip. The ultra-nationalist Golden Dawn party took to holding torchlit parades through the streets. The party rejects the term neo-Nazi, but there’s little doubt about its source of inspiration. Their symbol, the twisting maeander, is highly reminiscent of a swastika; they send teams of threatening young men into the streets wearing black shirts; their leader, Nikos Michaloliakos, specializes in flamboyant, melodramatic fist-shaking speeches, awash in self-pity; and several prominent members have openly approved of Hitler. These are not fringe figures in the Greek political landscape anymore. During the last legislative election, barely a month ago, they managed to take seven per cent of the vote. This time around they earned 6.92 per cent.

They are not unique to Greece. Just as the 1970s gave rise to a slew of European left-wing terrorists in the wake of turbulent social and economic change in the 1960s, so the failure of globalization is inevitably coughing up a new breed of fascism across the Continent.

Makoto Sakurai: "We came here to kill North... από pejorativeglutMakoto Sakurai, leader of the Japanese fascist group Zaitokukai, taunts visitors to the campus of the Korea University in Kodaira, Tokyo in a protest held on the 50th anniversary of the university earlier this winter. "I will kill you! I'm not joking!" he says, "We came here to kill North Koreans!"

Established in 1956 by the de-facto North Korean embassy in Japan, Chongryon, the university receives funding directly from the DPRK government, and its graduates are often sent to teach at North Korean schools across Japan.

While the full name of Zaitokukai means "Citizens against Special Privilege of Zainichi (Koreans)," the group has also been known to protest against Filipinos, Chinese and even Halloween.

'The Practice of the Wild' is a film profile of the poet and Pulitzer Prize winner Gary Snyder. Snyder has been a creative force in all the major cultural changes that have created the modern world. Along with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, he was a central figure of the Beat generation. He helped bring Zen Buddhism into the America scene, was an active participant in the anti-war movement and an inspiration for the quest for human potential. All along he was a founding intellect, essayist and leader of the new environmental awareness that supports legislation and preservation without losing sight of direct wild experience -- local people, animals, plants, watersheds and food sources.

This film, borrowing its name from one of Snyder's most eloquent non-fiction books, revolves around a life-long conversation between Snyder and his fellow poet and novelist Jim Harrison. These two old friends and venerated men of American letters converse while taking a wilderness trek along the central California coast in an area that has been untouched for centuries. They debate the pros and cons of everything from Google to Zen koans. The discussions are punctuated by archival materials and commentaries from Snyder friends, observers, and intimates who take us through the 'Beat' years, the years of Zen study in Japan up to the present -- where Snyder continues to be a powerful spokesperson for ecological sanity and bio-regionalism.

The Intellectual Roots of the Occupy Movement

The #Occupy Wall Street movement is primarily a Dadaist expression. Dada originated out of anti-war sentiment during World War I. Participants classified it as a protest against the

bourgeois nationalism and colonialism. They also saw it as a protest against intellectual conformity during wartime.

According to Wikipedia:

Many Dadaists believed that the ‘reason’ and ‘logic’ of bourgeois capitalist society had led people into war. They expressed their rejection of that ideology in artistic expression that appeared to reject logic and embrace chaos and irrationality. For example, George Grosz later recalled that his Dadaist art was intended as a protest “against this world of mutual destruction.”

Already at this point, there is a clear resemblance to the apparent chaos and disorganization of the Occupy Movement and the Dadaist Movement. However, this is only where the roots of the movement began. There is a very rich cultural and revolutionary history behind the Occupy Movement.

This is a rant about the greed that permeates the American political landscape. In fact the very core of who we are as a nation and a people.

Until we re-regulate our glorious corporate overlords, our condition -the Human Condition- in this country and on this planet remains in the hands of a select group of sociopathic plutocrats that care nothing of their nation and only about their personal fortunes.

Self appointed Masters of the Universe who don't seem to realize that their gene pool has been diminished and dulled by decades of greed, avarice and a sense of entitlement.

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Roots

Revelation 13

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy...

...And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?...

Mark 13

And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.